


The Breath of a Lie

by Secretness



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alec Lightwood Angst, Alec Lightwood Feels, Bad Parent Maryse Lightwood, Bad Parent Robert Lightwood, Coming Out, Depressed Alec Lightwood, Depression, Gay, Homosexuality, Hurt Alec Lightwood, Insecure Alec Lightwood, M/M, OMC - Freeform, Out of the Closet Alec Lightwood, Protective Jace Wayland, Self-Harm, Supportive Jace Wayland, surrogate father
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 21:22:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13221525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Secretness/pseuds/Secretness
Summary: For those who have slipped through the cracks.  That pain won't always be there."Air that left him had to be checked with every breath to make sure it did not carry with it words he couldn’t even think.  It was weird to talk without actually speaking, to hear his own voice, know his lips were moving, but feel nothing on his tongue."Eventually marriage forces Alec to tell his parents, tell or suffocate.  And when he does, Jace finds their response repulsive, offering their son to the greatest political advantage.  But Alec has more than one secret.  Some have even saved his life.





	The Breath of a Lie

**Author's Note:**

> (If anyone can offer a better summary, please send it. I'll keep working at it.)

Easy as breathing.

That’s what Jace had said when they were younger, one day fighting with these weapons would be as easy as breathing—even daggers, which Alec consistently complained about. Eventually Alec made progress with daggers, but his bow especially became an extension of his body, arrows the follow through of his mind. They were part of him.

But was it like breathing?

Air that left him had to be checked with every breath to make sure it did not carry with it words he couldn’t even think. It was weird to talk without actually speaking, to hear his own voice, know his lips were moving, but feel nothing on his tongue.

Breathing was not easy.

Alec pinched the bridge of his nose, his footsteps dragging to a stop on the stone floor. He leaned his shoulder into the wall. Down the corridor was his bedroom but it seemed so far away. He could sleep here, just slide to the floor and lean his head back and not move. Why was he so tired all the time? Isabelle was never tired, and Jace had batteries packed in somewhere. Alec just wanted to not move.

Two very important happenstances kept him from doing just that: the inevitable awkward confrontation he’d get by the first person who came across him, and his want for his comfortable, quiet bed. His bed didn’t ask questions and didn’t demand anything from him. He hadn’t realized it at first, but over the years his bed had become his favorite place. Days of training and demon fighting and pretending to be social were all spent with the same end goal—get back to bed. Diplomatic missions he used to enjoy, and he didn’t hate them now, but it wasn’t the same, and those were the only thing he was good at. 

And he meant ‘the only thing’. Isabelle had two parallel scratches down her arm from a demon claw, and Jace’s foot was swelled up from a Ravener bite. Alec couldn’t even protect them anymore.

Clang.

His sword hit the stone floor as he uncaringly dropped his equipment and began shedding his gear. He peeled off his sweaty shirt and slid his belt out if its loops. It too landed in the floor. As he stepped out of his thick and flexible under armour pants, his eyes swept the room. In the morning all the lay-about clutter would bother him, but he’d pick it up then. A year ago he wouldn’t have been able to sleep with such a mess. Instead he tossed his briefs and padded over to the Victorian dresser to dig out new ones. Part of him considered bathing, as he should, but it just seemed like too much work. He could do that when he cleaned tomorrow.

At a younger time he slept in big T-shirts, but he realized one night most of them were Jace’s. The first few years they had been brothers their clothes were roughly the same size, so clothing was tossed back and forth between them. Jace dug through the piles and stacks and took what he wanted. Alec took the first items saw that were comfortable, but his legs got longer and Jace’s shoulders got wider—which really just made his shirts extra comfortable. There were still a couple of Jace’s shirts in his drawer, but now wearing them felt dirty. It felt like a betrayal, to do such an intimate thing when Jace had such little knowledge. Alec yanked out a white cotton T-shirt and shut the drawer with an unintentional amount of force, knocking the dresser against the wall. 

Crawling into bed, he tugged the comforter up around his shoulders. Every muscle in his body relaxed, and he closed his eyes.

Maybe this was closer to what Jace was talking about. Everyday all day, this was the easiest to breathe.

~

“Alexander!”

His mother’s snappish voice abruptly grabbed his attention. It took a few seconds for him to focus on her face and was rewarded with an extremely irritated glare.

“Are you hearing any of this?” she shot at him, her arms folded across her chest. 

Robert frowned at him from the excessively large Head of Institute's desk. Alec stood behind Isabelle’s and Jace’s chairs, all three being briefed on their newest assignment. 

“Yes,” Alec answered shortly, crossing his own arms, “Bleeder den, dead mundanes. Moving on?”

She glared at him but slowly turned to nod for her husband to continue.

Their father droned on, and Alec needed him to just shut up. It occurred to him he should care more. People were dead. It was his job to care. But New York had lots of Shadowhunters, and bleeder dens were filled with addicts who knew the risks. Was this really worth the energy?

Jace and Isabelle rose from their chairs, the motion drawing his attention. 

“Hold on, Alexander,” his mother said, “We’d like to talk to you.”

He barely suppressed an eyeroll. His siblings shot him sympathetic looks as they filed out to leave him behind. 

“What’s going on?” Robert asked, putting down his pen and lacing his fingers, “You’ve been like… this a lot lately.” 

That made Alec pause. He slowly lifted his gaze to his dad and actually looked at him. Since when? His parents never noticed anything, especially his dad. Alec barely noticed himself, and he only admitted to tiny changes because it too became tiring to keep denying. But then, what had there been to notice? 

His dad continued, “You used to enjoy being out in the field. Now you only care for diplomatic missions.”

Alec blinked.

Oh. Of course.

His mother said something. His father said something else, but they said the same thing really. 

“Did I do something wrong?” Alec asked loudly, lifting his head to meet their eyes. Suddenly he couldn’t listen to them anymore.

Robert stopped midsentance, momentarily stunted by his child’s rudeness.

Maryse replied, “We’re not talking about punishment.”

“Did I do something wrong?” he repeated pointedly.

“No,” said Robert.

“So, what did I do to deserve the mini lecture? I do whatever you want, and I do it all correctly. I don’t screw up, and I do nothing else. So why am I hear?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. A few quick steps to the door, he opened it, and slid out, shutting it behind him much louder than he meant. 

For the moment he was glad vampires would be finding themselves on the messy end of his sword. He just needed to beat on something.

~

Sweat dripped off this nose and forehead and chin, splatting on the mat between his braced hands. 

God damn his useless body!

29 miles and then sparing with Jace, that’s all he had to do today. Instead he ran and ended up on all fours on the floor of the training room, unable to extend his legs. He tried to stretch, but his muscles rebounded and locked up. They never protested quite this badly, but he had never pushed like that. It shouldn’t matter though. He was a Shadowhunter, goddammit. He trained all his life, day and night, and still he couldn’t do enough. He ended up crouched on the floor, unable to catch his breath, blood rushing through his ears and drowning out every other sound. His whole body slick with sweat, his hands threatened to slide out from underneath him.

“Jesus, Alec, what happened?”

Jace’s jacket landed on the floor in the doorway, and he dropped to his knees beside his parabatai. Carefully Jace wrapped his arms around Alec’s chest and pulled him up into a sitting position. Ignoring Alec’s protests, Jace hooked him under the arms and drug him a few feet over to the wall to prop him up.

“What the hell, Alec,” Jace huffed as he pulled up one pants leg and whipped out his stele to trace an iratzi on Alec’s calf and then did the same to the other leg.

“Give me half an hour and then I can spar,” Alec said through gritted teeth.

Jace looked at him like his brother was losing his mind.

“No. Seriously? No. You’re going to sit here until you can move and then spend an hour is a very hot bath so you loosen up.” Jace plopped onto the matted floor in front of Alec and spread his legs out in a V, tapping his stele on the mat between them. “What did you do?”

“Ran, stretched.”

“Ran too far?”

“29 miles.”

Jace’s eyes widened, “We’ve only trained to 20.”

“You’ve only trained to 20,” Alec corrected, looking into the space above Jace’s head, “I am up to 26--if I push it.”

“So how did you end up at 29?”

Alec shrugged.

Jace sighed and leaned forward. He wrapped his hand around Alec’s ankle and slowly pulled it forward, unfolding the leg a little at a time. Alec hissed and tensed, his back curving and pushing his shoulders into the wall. Jace grimaced in sympathy and stopped. He dug his fingers into to the muscle in an attempt to work it loose. Inching Alec’s foot along the floor, Jace rolled the knuckles of his other hand over Alec’s thigh. He opened his hand to work around Alec’s upper leg.

Alec’s arm sliced down with enough force to bruise both their forearms, smashing Jace’s wrist into the floor. The violence of it surprised them. 

“Leave me alone, Jace,” Alec groaned, retracting his knee back to his chest, “It’s fine. Isabelle will spar with you.”

“I don’t care about sparing,” said Jace, angrier now, “And you’re not fine. You’re contracted and can’t move, so don’t tell me that.” Alec opened his mouth to argue, but Jace cut him off, “You do not get to do stupid things and expect me to not care or make you suffer for them. Deal with it.”

Jace got up on his knees and scooted closer, stele in hand. He drew up a couple more iratzes that didn’t receive objection, but before he could try to stretch Alec’s legs, Alec grabbed his pants legs and pulled them back down to his ankles.

Without looking at his brother, Alec said slowly in a clipped voice, “I do not want you to touch me, Jace. I’m serious. Don’t touch me.”

“What’s your problem?”

“Go. Away.”

Every part of Jace wanted to stay and argue with his stupid, stubborn brother, but he could feel Alec growing angrier egged on by frustration, and looking at the shape his brother was in, Jace wouldn’t even get a good fight out of him. And it certainly wouldn’t help Alec.

“Fine. Sit here then.”

Jace huffed, stood, and left, slamming the door hard enough to rattle Alec’s skull resting against the wall. Alec closed his eyes.

When he could walk again, he was going to spend the rest of the evening in bed.

~

Time blurred together. He couldn’t remember if something occured one morning or the night before. These periods were not unusual. Eventually things picked up again, and he was more aware of his surrounding the way he should be. Eventually he got better, but that wasn’t happening this time, and he didn’t know why. Isabelle made him laugh, and Jace was good at distraction, but a couple hours of blissful normality among weeks left him despondent and fuzzy.

Thunk.

His arrow landed. A deep, chopped crater had been hacked into the elevated target mounted halfway up the wall of the training room. Even equipment made to  
take blows suffered after 300 arrows. He hadn’t shot so many since he honed his aim.

Thunk.

He strung another arrow, paying no mind to the blood running down his right hand and forearm. The thread of his bow fit perfectly in the wet, fleshy grooves worn into his fingers.

Thunk.

Thunk.

“Isabelle told me you were out,” Maryse’s voice came from behind him.

“She’s a good sister,” he replied with a deadened tone.

Thunk.

With a sigh, Maryse approached him. True to her nature, she tried to adjust his arms and feet with little gestures. He jerked back from her touch, dropping his bow, and stepped away. She sighed again.

“Your father and I were going to tell you together, but since you’re avoiding us…. We are looking at marriage for you…. No comment? Any requests?”

Alec shook his head, slotting the unused arrow back into his quiver. 

“We were thinking the right marriage might put you in Alicante where you could at the very least be liason for the New York Institute to the Clave.”

“Alicante,” Alec repeated quietly, hooking his bow onto its place on the wall, “Move to Alicante. Leave Jace and Isabelle.”

“Jace can come with you.”

Alec snorted, “Jace is a fighter. He would suffer in Alicante’s diplomacy.”

“Well, we will figure it out when the time comes. Do you know any of the girls your age roughly? I was thinking Aline Penhallow--”

“No,” her cut her off sharply, “No, leave her alone.”

His mother blinked at the aggressive tone.

“Okay,” she conceded slowly.

He made a beeline for the door, but Maryse reached out and grabbed his elbow. He grudgingly stopped, but when she gasped his wrist and withdrew her stele to heal his sliced fingers, he yanked his hand away and left.

~

It wasn’t until he squirreled up in his bed three nights later that it finally started to sink in. Even then it didn’t bother him the way he thought it should.

His mother told him he was getting married. Of course no one knew who he’d be married to, but he wasn’t concerned. Should he be? Someone he’d be bound to for the rest of his life-- he should probably go have a say in who that would be, but he just couldn’t care. His concerns were far more drawn to the aftermath of marriage. Where would Jace fit into his life? Who would have Isabelle’s back in a fight? She was so independent, there were few she’d go into battle with.

But then how much help had he been? They were getting hurt more frequently. It should have been the opposite, but with him protecting their backs what did they think would happen? Maybe they’d fight better if he wasn’t getting in the way. Maybe they’d be safer fighting with someone else.

And Jace--this was a good excuse to put distance between them, or would be when Jace found out. Alec was perfectly fine with Jace never knowing, but that was unrealistic. Perhaps he could put off married life until Jace sent him away. And if Jace kept it a secret, Alec could still have a political career. He could still be worth something. But Jace wouldn’t owe him anything, and Alec didn’t have the right to ask.

Alec rolled over in bed and tucked the blanket further under his chin.

Why couldn’t he just fucking be normal?

~

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like an escape and the more it seemed like his family was looking for a way to throw him away. He couldn’t ally the sides of his mind, part of him understanding and agreeing, and the other part devastated. No matter how right they were, thinking on it too much left him unable to breathe. The pain of the people he loved, these people he would give up his life for, so uncaring and apathetic to his existence and value--that pain was immeasurable. 

Alec tried to force a deep breath but it caught. Goose bumps spread down his arms, and pressure pushed on the backs of his eyes. He looked down at his shoes. Good enough. Sprinting out of the institute, he splashed through puddles on the side of the streets.

He ran as fast as he could. Distance used to work, but now he could run too far. It took too long to stop the tears. His body could support both. Now he had to run quickly, as fast as possible until the distance was far enough to occupy his body.

~

There was a small amount of satisfaction in scrubbing a rough rag too hard over his skin. Scalding water soon made his whole body red, and any patch considered cleaned was much brighter. Head tipped back under the spray, dried sweat sloughed away with suds. 

A thought hit him like a slap. 

His hands stilled, and he opened his eyes, blinking at the wall in front of him. 

This girl, this woman--whomever she was--did she deserve this? He did, but what about her? Would she deserve to be lonely for the rest of her life? People joked about marriages being sexless, but how much of that could he get away with really? How much romance could he fake? Arranged marriages were difficult and up in the air and sometimes people just didn’t click. This was so much worse. She’d be marrying a ghost. It wouldn’t be a marriage.

He could try. He could care about her, protect her. He could adopt her like a sister--unless she hated him. Like Jace, she was bound to figure him out sooner or later. Maybe he should tell her upfront before she agreed to marry him and hope she didn’t say anything. Later in life, she could take down his whole life at any point--end his career, his friendships, remove his parents and Jace and his kids. 

Kids.

His children.

Alec’s chest constricted. He fell forward, his hand slapping on the wall in front of him to keep him from falling to his knees. A harsh breath scraped its way into his lungs. He scrambled to shut off the shower, patches of white bubbles still visible in his hair. The shower curtain tried to trip him. He caught himself on the edge of the sink and sank to his knees.

He went from not being able to breathe to unable to breathe fast enough. He rested his forehead on the cold porcelain, panting, his grip getting tighter and tighter.

Shadowhunter culture was not fond of homosexuals. The Clave was not lenient under any circumstances, and while there may not have been an explicit law that said he couldn’t have children, that’s what people thought. And what the Clave thought was practically law on its own. If his wife wanted him away from his kids, they would listen to her. She would get her way, and he would lose his children. 

Scrambling into his dirty clothes, he skipped his boxers, pants sticking on his wet legs. He stumbled out of his bathroom and onto the brown rug in his bedroom. Soft skin on the back of his neck began to give way under his nails. He went from digging into his skin to griping at his hair, quick steps pacing one direction in his room and then the other, back and forth, back and forth.

People could just come in and take his family away again. Strangers or worse, people he knew, people he considered friends could decide he was bad for them, contagious somehow, damaging to his children. He would never hurt them! And yet the Clave could separate them. How could they do that? His family needed him. 

He needed them. 

Rage shot through him, splitting the despair and pain and shoving them to the sides.

The Clave didn’t get to keep him from his family. They didn’t get to do anything!

They knew NOTHING!

He punched the wall of his room, blinded by the injustice of it.

None of them understood. How could they judge and make decisions on HIS life? It was HIS!

He punched again.

Even his parents. What did they know? Why did they get to decide? Was it really that terrible, was HE? And now he didn’t count as a person? 

He punched with his other hand, relentless pounding in his ears. 

He was a person. To Hell with them and their opinions and propriety. To Hell with them all! He would be a good dad, a great one, and they didn’t get to decide otherwise! 

“ALEC!” 

He stumbled back and blinked.

The pounding in his head melded with the pounding of his door. Suddenly a mighty force slammed it, making tiny splintered noises in the wood. Jace would take down the door if Alec didn’t let him in. 

Alec blinked several times, trying to control his breathing. His chest hurt, and he couldn’t decide if he had been holding his breath or harshly panting. Dizzy as he was with adrenaline-saturated blood coursing through him, he leaned towards the door, his feet eventually following. Numbly reaching out, he went to open it but found his right hand a twisted, purple mess. His knuckles were nowhere they should be, tendons popping up, and his nails were already turning black. 

He gave it a distant look and reached with his other hand. This time he was somewhat startled to see it coated in blood and still bleeding. It too was twisting into dark colors, but multiple punctures in his skin and a segmented, deep cut along his knuckles painted it red.

The door nearly imploded again with a significantly greater amount cracks and creaks than last time.

Alec opened his mouth to tell Jace to stop but no voice left him. He tried again, took a deep breath to make sure there was air in him, and forced it out a third time. 

“Jace.”

The pounding stopped.

“Jace, just let me….”

Holding his hands at chest level, he reached towards the deadbolt on the door with his elbow. Pushing the lock with his chicken wing wasn’t immediately successful, but then it clanged open. Alec quickly brought his hands behind his back. The movement gave him the first sharp twinges from his injuries. Pain left behind a nagging awareness of throbbing through his fingers and knuckles.

The knob slowly turned, and the door pushed in, Jace’s hand still on the handle. His normally perfect hair in his wild eyes. Anger and irritation and panic crossed his face, but finally laying sight on Alec, he melted into worry. 

Alec was often cause for worry. From the beginning their parabatai bond had been low in tone, almost dull, and it had become more so as they aged, but Jace accepted it as simply how Alec’s bond was, stable and muted. It rarely felt volatilite on Jace’s side. Jace only got a jolt from him when Alec watched one of them brush with death, Isabelle especially. 

Lately though, moments of breathlessness would overwhelm Jace. They passed almost immediately but left him disoriented. 

He had always pictured his bond to Alec as the thickest, deepest string on a guitar. Now everything felt wrong, suffocating. Jace was panicking, but he wasn’t  
panicked. He had scrambled out of his chair and sprinted from his room to Alec’s locked door. Jace could hear him inside, and that alarm became genuine.

Alec didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t even sure what had happened. Showering was his last clear memory. Everything past that was a nauseous blur of rage and pain. He blinked, his lips parted, attempting to order his thoughts.

Jace quickly went to his brother, shutting the abused door behind him. He slowly reached out to set the backs of his fingers to Alec’s cheek.

After a moment of confusion, Alec jerked back. Under no circumstances would he stand there and let Jace wipe away his tears like a fucking child. He didn’t know when he started crying, and he took a second to remember when it stopped but couldn’t. 

Quietly, Jace asked, “Alec, what’s going on?”

No answer, just a stare.

“Let me see your hand.”

“Why?”

Without looking, Jace extended his arm out to the side and pointed. With a frown, Alec’s eye followed his direction to the wall. Stone did not give or break like wood and plaster. Instead the wall sported a painted, dark and drying, runny circle. Alec blinked at it and felt… nothing. Emotions did not get away from him, and now that they had and it was over with, he didn't know what to feel.

Jace’s arm lowered, and he pointed to the floor, tracing a short path of drops along the floor to the puddle under Alec, staining his heels.

Jace stepped closer, holding his hands out between their chests.

“Let me see,” he said in that same soft voice.

A thousand other options ran through Alec’s head, but none of them resulted in him being able to heal himself, and all of them ended in having to ask someone else. Keeping his eyes fixed downward on Jace’s hands, Alec brought his own form behind his back and tried to set them in Jace’s, but upon seeing the contorted, purple sausages of Alec’s fingers and knuckles, he dropped his hands away to avoid touching the injured tissue. 

He let out a long breath through his nose, and with a hard swallow, said, “‘kay, wash before healing.”

He turned and put a guiding arm around Alec’s shoulders but let it hover, not sure how the contact would be received. Jace walked him to the bathroom but stopped in the doorway as his eyes swept over the room. The shower curtain rod lay diagonally up the shower wall, one end jammed against the shower’s lip. Four links remained connected to the yellowed plastic curtain swathing the bathroom floor. He blinked but elected not to comment. He approached the sink and turned the taps until he got a gentle, lukewarm water.

Jace’s movements were obviously gentle. He marked Alec’s arms up to his shoulders with any rune he thought might help until an iratzi could be applied. Cleaning Alec’s hands was bad--face clenching, teeth gritting bad, but when Jace started popping joints into place, Alec wobbled as dizziness swept over him. On the fourth and last joint of the first hand, Alec shoved Jace away, bent, and vomited into the toilet. With quick movements, Jace reached over and yanked Alec’s last finger, pushing the knuckle into place. A shout took them both by surprise, and Alec dropped to a knee, heaving.

Jace followed him down, groping for Alec arm. Alec wasn’t cooperative, but Jace reached across him and grasped his elbow, pulling his arm out to draw precise iratzis on both top and bottom of his wrist. Alec carefully pulled his hand back and closed his eyes to deep breathe. Jace gave him a minute to calm down.

He stood, backed up over the curtain and Alec’s disregarded briefs, and leaned against the wall. Folding his arms across his chest, his gaze dropped to his feet, unable to watch his brother.

The person he loved most in the entire world was a mess. And he didn’t know why. He didn’t know how to help. Or what to do. He hadn’t felt like this since his father died. He was lost, and he knew it was nothing compared to how Alec felt. 

“Time for the other one?” asked Jace softly.

Alec squeezed his eyes shut for a second and then nodded.

Hand number two wasn’t as dislocated and broken but hurt just as much. Pulling and pushing opened the splits in his skin, and blood spilled over them both. Jace made sure to hold them over the sink. Alec trembled and hissed and swore. A couple times he crouched with Jace still holding his hand above his head.

“Last one,” Jace told him.

Alec bit viciously into his bottom lip and cursed when his hand was officially reassembled. Jace was quick to iratzi him, adding a few more over his arms. After an extra washing to get the last remaining blood from his skin, Alec was marched to his bed and manhandled into it. Jace propped him up with pillows and covered him to the waist with a blanket, a pillow laid across his lap to gently hold his hands until they healed. When Jace was satisfied with his brother’s position, he sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his eyes.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked.

No answer.

“What’s going on, Alec? Please, tell me.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“Please, Alec.”

Instead of answering, Alec closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Jace readied his stele and retraced the fading iratzis. He hooked a finger on Alec’s collar at the bottom his throat and pulled it down. Alec opened his eyes at the touch of the stele, and registered right away it wasn’t drawing an iratzi. 

“Jace--!”

Jace closed the rune, and Alec’s wide eyes drooped. His head thunked backwards. Jace adjusted his brother’s arms and hands and sat back to look at him. In a magic induced unconsciousness, it was the most peacefully Jace had seen him--in years, now that he thought about it. But the bond they shared was still writhing in turmoil. Eventually it would calm and flatten and feel dull, toneless, despondent. Alec was falling apart. Jace and Isabelle could see it, but only he could feel it. The flesh that held them together was tearing, and Jace couldn’t do anything about it until Alec let him.

Jace gathered himself and then supplies to clean away blood and fix the shower. Throughout the night, he would re-apply iratzis and block Isabelle from the room, knowing Alec would not want her to see his state, or that of his room.


End file.
